Day Like The Last
by Kouklara
Summary: Kenny walks across the road, smokes a cigarette, thinks about how his life sucks and gets a little depressed. Then he gets hit by a truck and dies.


His dark blond hair is falling messily over sky blue eyes. It hasn't been washed in days. The last of the shampoo has been used up and there's no money yet to buy some more. There's a smudge of dirt on his pale cheek and a cigarette is dangling from his thin lips. Yeah, he's polluting the air, yeah, cigarettes will kill him, yeah, he's wasting money he doesn't have. He doesn't care. It's been a long time since he really cared about anything.

Small of stature, very thin and narrow-shouldered, with a thin face and big eyes, there's nothing forced in his good looks. He has an easygoing smile and a cheerful voice. To his friends he's just another laid-back teenager. But he's always been the fourth friend, always the one left out, and they don't notice the emptiness in those eyes, and how the easygoing smile is never completely genuine.

His face and body are covered in tiny, pale scars; wounds that have been left over and over again in the same places; each time renewing an old fear, an old insecurity, an old death.

He's something of an enigma to the girls: that cute guy who always dies, who always wears that orange parka, who always smells like rats and poor people. Of course, most of them have slept with him, but of course none of their _friends_ know that, because they don't want to be thought of as sluts, and because all of them tell themselves that they alone are close to him and understand him, despite the fact that he was obviously looking at Red's butt and not Bebe's, and despite the fact that no one, _no one_, hardly even himself, understand him, and very _very_ few people, if any, have ever come close to him.

Manipulated, used, underlooked, ignored, misunderstood? Maybe, but he really couldn't give a damn. He's not a good person. Easygoing, stoic, kind perhaps; but not a good person. He doesn't care about anybody or anything. And nobody and nothing cares about him.

A tattered brown shoe sinks into the snow before him. Winter has really set in, which means it's even colder than usual. The town is smothered in a kind of sleepy, dozy silence. It's early in the morning and he's out walking. He wishes his parents would just hurry up and divorce if they were going to scream at each other all night about money and insurance and drinking, gambling, money money money. It would make his (always depressingly short) life that little bit more bearable. He takes another puff on his cigarette and throws it into the slushy snow. The glowing orange butt sizzles away to black instantly and a plume of dark smoke curls up into the atmosphere. He watches it disintegrate with a sigh. Just once, he thinks miserably, just once in life, it would be nice to be given a chance. One chance. At anything. At escaping this life, at fixing his family, at making something of himself. The other grotty shoe sinks into the snow, crushing the cigarette butt.

A snowflake falls from the sky. A beautiful intricate star-shaped thing, glittering in the early morning light. He watches it drift through the air without really taking it in. Another step. Another fight from his parents ringing in his ears. Another step. Another _you bastards_ echoing in his head. Another step. Another bleeping hospital machine before his eyes. Another step and another truck speeding towards him, screeching tyres and bellowing horn. "GET THE HELL OUT OF THE ROAD, KID!" the driver screams.

Kenny turns, holds up his middle finger and gives the driver a wry smile.

Mrs McCormick sprints outside after her ex-husband's car, screaming swear words at him. Then she sees her son's body sprawled across the road in a pool of blood. She sighs and approaches him. A trace of the wan smile is left on his bloodied face; the eyes are still wide open. His arms and legs are at unnatural angles and a rat is nibbling on his ear. The smell of blood is thick in the air around him. Shaking her head, she drags the corpse off the road and apologizes to the bewildered truck driver.

The next day, Kenny goes to the cemetery and vandalizes his newest tombstone.


End file.
